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November 2007

30 November 2007

It seems that when it rains it pours (see also Reading at Risk - Nation at Risk). This morning the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial highlighted the insanity that continues in our land with the handling of wealth generating intellectual talent. Our laws and regulations make it easy for foreigners to get their education here after which they are forced/encouraged to go back to their home countries to compete against our industries. Moreover, when US companies need to hire foreign talent, the feds make that double difficult through the dysfunctional H-1B visa program and other regulations. And because this is an issue beyond the ken of most voters, the system remains broken under the mantra that ‘we must protect American jobs’.

29 November 2007

“Reading at Risk is not a report that the National Endowment for the Arts is happy to issue.” Thus starts out the latest study on the reading habits and abilities of America’s adults. The report “presents a detailed but bleak assessment of the decline of reading’s role in the nation’s culture.” The following is an assemblage of salient points from the preface.

“Reading at Risk is not a collection of anecdotes, theories, or opinions. It is a descriptive survey of national trends in adult literary reading. Based on an enormous sample size of more than 17,000 adults, it covers most major demographic groups – providing statistical measurements by age, gender, education, income, region, race, and ethnicity.”

The data in the report are extensive and compelling, “but the report can be further summarized in a single sentence: literary reading in America is not only declining rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young. The concerned citizen in search of good news about American literary culture will study the pages of this report in vain.”

The report recognizes the tremendous shift to an “oral culture” and other forms of communications made possible by the electronic media. But that does not come without cost since “print culture affords irreplaceable forms of focused attention and contemplation that make complex communications and insights possible.” Evaluate this statement in terms of the electorate’s ability to properly comprehend national issues such as climate change, healthcare, state of the economy, … necessary to understand your local politician or pundit and then vote.

Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts concludes with “Reading is not a timeless, universal capability. Advanced literacy is a specific intellectual skill and social habit that depends on a great many educational, cultural, and economic factors. As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent-minded. These are not qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose.”

And Dear Reader, unfortunately that is today’s good news on our declining cultural and intellectual abilities as a people who seek to remain free and prosperous. Today we also heard of the just released International Comparisons in Fourth-Grade Reading Literacy published by the National Center of Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. The AP reports that “U.S. fourth-graders have lost ground in reading ability compared with kids around the world, according to results of a global reading test.” The global reading test cited is the Progress in International Reading Literacy test. This news is so bad that today’s Wall Street Journal, using small print, hid the revelation in Section D page 4. What’s a long-term investor to do? At this point the studied reader knows that we haven’t even touched the tragedy that is the nation’s innumeracy problem.

So there you have two more flashing red lights. Unless there is a massive change in our public educational system, the generation coming online in fifteen years will be made up mostly of the also rans. All this will come to pass in a world that will see more nations than ever in human history compete fiercely in economic and intellectual arenas. And the people in the up and coming nations already are willing to do more for less (See ‘The World is Flat’)

What does this mean? Well, it’s clear that we will still have a small fraction of people smart enough to create some wealth that will have to be taxed to a fare-thee-well. The law of large numbers insures that. But will the rest of the people be satisfied with what they can earn from asking, “Will you be taking fries with that?”

27 November 2007

[This piece first appeared on 27 January 2006 in the Other Voices column of The Union. It attempts to highlight the sometimes insanely conflicting agendas of certain activist factions of Nevada County that seek to limit growth in these idyllic mountains while concurrently demanding that access to that region from a major metropolitan area be made facile - aka having your cake and eating it.]

Johnny Bumblelove was known as a sensitive, loving, and inclusive individual. As a long time resident of Nevada County, Johnny had become involved in many community causes over the years. Lately he had read articles and letters in the paper about what a horrible road Highway 49 had turned into, and he had become more concerned than ever. One night before falling asleep he was thinking about the carnage everybody knew was happening on that highway, and he wished more intensely than ever that there would be something he could do about it.

26 November 2007

The Editor of Nevada County’s The Union, Jeff Pelline, graced my announced exit from the newspaper’s online community blog with a visit to this blog and a lengthy comment that expressed his continued irritation with certain local bloggers. His agitated missal appeared to address concerns that did not relate to my ‘sayonara post’ and perhaps is a better indicator of how The Union views its journalistic fiefdom. There is no doubt that Jeff Pelline is a very visible and important man in our community. His voice can set the direction and tone of many undertakings in our beautiful, isolated, and somewhat insular county. In short, while he holds the confidence of publisher Jeff Ackerman and Swift Communications, hereabouts he is not a man to be ignored.

With this preamble I reproduce both my ‘sayonara post’ and his comment which I have characterized as scattered and confused. My attempts to correct are marbled into Jeff’s piece and labeled by [gjr]. To the Reader intending to submit himself to lighter fare and yet who will be the final arbiter of it all, I hope that this dish of spaghetti will be less tangled than it appears.

25 November 2007

We lived our entire adult lives in SoCal; Jo Ann was born in Los Angeles where I arrived as a teenager. The 25 years before we moved here in 2002 were spent on Saddle Peak Road on the crest line of the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu. With sweeping one hundred-plus mile views of the ocean, islands, the city, and mountains it was the most scenic of places to live in that metropolitan madness. But there was a price to be paid for all that natural beauty and wonderful wilderness so close to everything.

24 November 2007

In the 23nov07 issue of The Union a Grass Valley reader takes exception to our governor’s “flagrant” misrepresentation of California’s growth under his administration. After some research on the web, she states that “In truth, California no longer ranks as sixth-largest. We have not had this status since 1999. We are currently ranked at eighth largest, according to the U. S. Commerce Department and World Bank figures. Clearly this does not indicate growth. It boggles my mind that the governor of California can stand before millions of people and make such a flagrantly false statement. Does no one care?”

Her boggled mind did not help her understand that California’s decline in the economy size rankings does not give her enough information to accuse the governor of lying. During the cited interval many world economies have been growing at prodigious rates. For example, if several countries below California’s former ranking grew at, say, 6-8% per annum and California only grew at 3% (not a bad growth rate), then California’s ranking could easily have fallen as indicated. So, for her to conclude that a drop in the rankings “clearly … does not indicate growth” does however clearly indicate that she is another member of this country’s innumerate hordes.

This letter illustrates that, as a source of information, even the magnificence of the internet is helpless against such ignorance. When the time comes, I don’t know how this boggled mind will vote, but it’s likely that she and her peers may wind up disappointed in the results from casting their ballots on such misinterpretations of political assertions based quantitative and logical arguments. All else given equal, these folks are the proverbial putty in the hands of sleaze-bag politicians.

Finally, that The Union allowed this correspondent to embarrass herself publicly is also a commentary on the acumen of that paper’s editorial staff. As the lady plaintively asks, “Does no one care?” Apparently not. But then again, given the audience, maybe no actual embarrassment was suffered on this 42nd anniversary of the Great Society.

23 November 2007

Dear Reader, the articles below posted today 23 November 2007 all address community growth as it affects our small (pop approx 100,000) Sierra foothills county. However, the issues we grapple with here in Nevada County are at least national in scope. I've done my best to gather these together from their originally published locations on NC Media Watch and TheUnion (print and website). Doing this work to provide a new unified 'start page' for my scribblings is turning out to be real pick and shovel work. If some of you will find the effort worthwhile, then so will I.

If I had my druthers, I’d like western Nevada County to grow into what a lot of folks call a ‘balanced community’. We all have differences in what we consider balanced, my own vision is something close to Simi Valley in Ventura County, a town Jo Ann and I helped to become a model city in the seventies with residential areas, parks, shopping, businesses, and populated by people of all colors living in marbled neighborhoods. From recent visits there we are happy to report that growth has been kinder to it than many California towns with a favored youth. But residing in the armpit of the San Fernando Valley ten minutes away, its future now looks uncertain.

Our Jeff Ackerman recently called for such growth in his 21mar06 editorial which, because of an unfortunate choice of a word or two, left many people seeing him as yet another social engineering import to these forests and hills. My own consternation to his editorial was blogged in ‘Planned Color In My Back Yard?’ on NC Media Watch. Jeff responded to the piece with a kind email and followed up with his clarifying 28mar06 editorial that, to my mind, tilted The Union toward a more level political stance.

Today the ill-defined notion of a balanced community is almost universally worshipped by all right-thinking people. The other night in Grass Valley the balanced and sustainable community was rolled out during a public forum on growth. Everyone there accepted its obvious merits as they would the sun’s rising in the morning. Yet I find myself in a quandary about the matter and sometimes feel awkward when I remain standing as others eagerly genuflect when the subject comes up in discussion. My friend and blog partner Russ Steele and I have an ongoing dialogue about the, to him obvious, merits of seeking/maintaining a balanced community here in Nevada County.

On the larger scale the growth issue in Nevada County is a tempest in a teapot. But to those of us who live in this lovely little teapot that issue promises to brew itself into a full-blown hurricane. Let me posit that the major contributor to the hot wind blowing across the county is our ignorance of the actual numbers related to growth. Our social engineering friends on the left, who have always known what is best for us, have now identified the single family home of American dream fame as nothing but the night sweats of the cultural Neanderthals among us. Building a house with a yard is now labeled as “sprawl” by our self-appointed and sensitive betters. And compliantly moving our families into apartment blocks is the epitome of “smart growth”. The mainstream media daily trumpet the wisdom and attraction of such proposals and planning across the country. But really, how attractive is all this social engineering?

Before we again go all over the map on affordable housing and rent control — or in more obtuse blather, “rent stabilization” — perhaps we should first do something simple and straightforward when renting in mobile home parks. These renters always seem to be surprised when they are told about rent increases. A letter at the get-go outlining the blunt truth about the tenant-landlord relationship they are getting into may help in avoiding such fuss. I offer a draft of such a letter at NC Media Watch; it might be worth a try.

Avoiding such surprised outrages by tenants of existing rental facilities is an issue different from the ongoing Nevada County affordable housing debate. To the extent we can keep these separated, we may be able to make progress on the advisability of rent control and the supply of affordable housing. And finally, wouldn’t it be a gas if the same people who propose “rent stabilization” would also include “cost stabilization” as part of their deep thinking?

20 November 2007

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw recently told a Washington audience that by 2018 the Washington Post (and presumably other newspapers) would survive only in their online editions. Subscribers are dropping the pulp versions of the newspaper at record rates and many are abandoning professional journalists’ versions of the news altogether. Newspapers are seeking to divert their readers’ attention to this development by switching from publishing the traditional circulation figures to giving out something called “reach”. This new circulation metric is supposed to be the sum of the old print circulation plus the number of daily unique visitors to the newspaper’s website. It is not yet clear that the advertisers will accept this apples and oranges comparison because the online perusal experience is markedly different from that of the traditional page turning session.In any event, if this prognostication holds for the nation’s flagship newspapers, what can we surmise will be the fate of the more marginally budgeted and staffed small town news outlets like our own Union?

16 November 2007

Welcome dear Reader to this, my first weblog.From it I hope to record scribblings on various topics that may contain a new thought or two for your amusement and, perhaps, for The Record.In this I belatedly join the ranks of thousands (soon millions?) who bare parts of themselves on the web for all the world to see.Actually, my aim is not so much for you to see me, but to see and, hopefully, understand what I see.And if you feed back your comments, I may hope to also understand what you see and thereby we both benefit.